Readers and bakers eat their words at Kalamazoo’s 19th Annual Edible Book Festival

Editor’s Note: Fran Dwight took all photos.

KALAMAZOO, MI — It takes a specific skill to be an Edible Book winner.

One needs to reflect, in food, a classic work; its story, its tone. Or should it simply look like the cover? Or, maybe, it could be a literal depiction of a scene in the story?

Trigger Warning: Some contestants use horrific, blunt-force puns. 

Also, you should be able to eat your words.

Two of the 19 entries in the 19th Annual Edible Book Festival: “The Grapes of Math” and “Wuthering Sprites.”

The 2026 Edible Book Festival took place on a Saturday afternoon, March 28. A large crowd of book-makers, book-bakers, and fans packed the display area at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center in the Park Trades Center. 

People were voting on their favorites in the adult and kids’ categories. When it is all done, the books will be consumed.

Jeff Abshear, KBAC Executive Director, pointed out that entries should’ve been on tables by 3:30, but more were arriving. Like many writers, some of the creators of these works were past the deadline. 

There were 19 edible books, fitting since this was the 19th year. 

The event used to be on an Art Hop night, but arthoppers made “it so incredibly crowded,” Abshear says. “You couldn’t even move through the space.”

Many parents and kids packed the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center for the 2026 Edible Book Festival.

KBAC moved it to Saturdays, “so it would be just an event for us,” around four years ago. COVID recovery and the move made the crowd sparse at first, “but now we’re back up to a nice crowd,” he says.

“Tom SAWyer”

We went around the tables. Photographer Fran Dwight was laughing at each. I tended to groan.

“Duckleberry Finn.” “The Sword in the Scone.” “The Grapes of Math.”

You had to think about some. There was a turkey, surrounded by saws. The book next to it is Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

Oh, SAWyer. But why… oh, a TOM turkey.

Do you enjoy these horrible puns? I  ask a couple, Dave Marlatt and Mary Whalen, also looking at the turkey. 

“Well, my sister-in-law made it,” Marlatt says with a laugh. 

He asks, “Doesn’t everybody love puns?” Marlatt then quotes 20th-century humorist Fred Allen, “Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns. He should be drawn and quoted.”  

Guide to making a winning edible book

How does one win in the cutthroat world of edible bookmaking?

A reproduction of Kalamazoo author Bonnie Jo Campbell’s “The Waters,” obviously had a lot of thought and baking going into it.

Katie Pearson, of Tabitha Farm, her urban farm in Edison, tells us all about it. It’s a sourdough focaccia bread, with wild forest and store-bought herbs. There’s spinach from Kalamazoo’s women-owned Long Valley Farm.

“What else? Oh, and I made a whipped goat cheese with herbs as well. But I’m going to bring that out once we serve it,” Pearson says.

“They call it focaccia painting, where you use herbs to make these flower motifs. And if you look at the actual book cover — I’m trying to mimic the book cover, which I should have brought.”

Pearson didn’t have the book next to her work for voters to see how the focaccia matches. And she could’ve used a longer artist’s statement on all the details that make it an obvious tribute to Campbell’s novel of half-wild women and herbalists living off the Southwest Michigan land.

Unfortunately, she didn’t win anything for her effort. Adult winners were: 3rd place, Mary Platte’s “Sword in the Scone,” 2nd, Connie Buitron’s “It,” and, yes, 1st went to “Tom Sawyer,” by Margie Smith and Rosemary Marlatt.

Buitron managed to get second with an accurate, and creepy, rendition in cake of Pennywise the malevolent clown staring from a curb drain, with a real red balloon floating to attract the kids. 

No puns, just “sick,” is how Buitron describes her cake. She was inspired more by the 2017 film than the Stephen King novel.  “I just love horror movies, really,” she says. Some of the entries were “a little too cute. You got to switch it up.”

Smith was attempting to cut the turkey, serving up her and Marlatt’s winner to eager kids, while explaining it was three cakes, held it all together with frosting and plastic L brackets for shelving units. “It’s just a mess!” she says, cutting, but it held together during the voting.

She tells us the secret to winning. “One of the tricks is, you kinda’ have to have an entry that kids are also gonna vote for. Parents, they’re looking for something more sophisticated. But a kid, they want something clever, fun, bright, colorful, candy-filled.”

Smith learned the importance of playing to the children when she made “The Silence of the Lambs” a few years before, which adults loved, but kids didn’t understand, since they likely hadn’t seen the movie or read the book about murder and cannibalism. 

First place winner in the kids’ category showed the real winning spirit, however: The love for a book. 

“I was not expecting this to happen at all!” Astrid Reynolds says, very excitedly.

She made a pizza with pepperoni stars, and a flaming rocketship made of pepper strips, inspired by the 2022 kids’ graphic novel, “The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza.” 

What was Reynolds’ inspiration? Is this her favorite book?

“Yes!” she says, and quickly turns to help serve attendees her space pizza.